A key function of Digital Threads is to be able to answer questions about project status in real-time without the overhead of data collection, status reports and meetings. In this post, we discuss some of the Syndeia Web Dashboard’s reporting capabilities as applied to our Autonomous Vehicle project.

• What requirements have been linked to test cases?
• What system functions have been linked to code files in Git repositories?
• What system structures have been linked to PDM BOMs?

We can also ask questions about the connected artifacts in the project, for example,

• What requirements have received final approval?
• What requirements have been verified?
• What JIRA tasks have been completed?

By both maintaining digital thread graphs and providing direct access to the underlying data sources, Syndeia is uniquely suited to asking both types of questions and providing the answers through its own REST API to clients we provide, such as the Syndeia Web Dashboard, and clients the user creates or adapts, which we will discuss in future posts.

 Figure 1 Graph query, Get all Relations, Project AVDZ01 on Syndeia Web Dashboard 

The digital thread graph of inter-model connections can be analyzed using the standard Gremlin graph query language. This uses highly efficient search algorithms even when the graph contains millions of nodes. Figure 1 displays all the relations for the autonomous vehicle project, comprising 227 links between 8 separate repositories. In the Syndeia Web Dashboard, the user has the ability to create, save and execute their own Gremlin queries. The “save” capability allows a Gremlin specialist to create and validate custom queries and save them as part of a digital thread project where they can be re-run at any time by any user with access to the project.

 Figure 2 Digital Thread Explorer from Project AVDZ01 in Syndeia Web Dashboard 

An alternate use of graph analysis is the Digital Thread Explorer, shown in Figure 2. Starting with any artifact in the digital thread project, nearest neighbors can be interactively expanded as far as desired. Artifact symbols provide a direct link to the underlying data repository. This is a valuable tool for design reviews, impact analysis and forensic failure investigations, with the ability to trace cause-and-effect, then dig deeper, without time-consuming searches for all the needed data.

 Figure 3 Syndeia Web Dashboard Report on JIRA Stories for Project AVDZ01 

The Syndeia Web Dashboard also provides standard reports on the connected artifacts, data that Syndeia extracts from the underlying repositories as needed. Figure 3 displays one such report for the JIRA issues connected into the AVDZ01 digital thread project. This involves a combination of questions

• What JIRA issues are connected in the project, asked at the Syndeia graph level?
• What are the attributes of each, asked at the JIRA repository level?

The results report issue status, priority, type and assignee, and are updated every time the report is refreshed.

While a wide range of questions can be answered, not every task or query can be supported by a single user interface, which is why Syndeia has been developed as an API-first enterprise application. In the upcoming blog posts in this series, we will show how the Autonomous Vehicle project appears in custom scripts and dashboards, digital pipelines and AI-agent driven UIs.

In the following blog posts in this series, we will demonstrate some of these current capabilities and offer a few glimpses of the future

• Part 11 - Model-Based Systems Engineering for Autonomous Vehicles, Part 11 – Digital Threads 
• Part 12 – An introduction to Digital Thread Projects, Relations, Baselines and the Syndeia Web Dashboard 
• Part 13 – Reports, Graph Analysis and the Digital Thread Explorer (This Part)
• Part 14 – Open REST API for scripts, Jupyter notebooks and project metrics (To be released)
• Part 15 – Digital Pipelines (To be released)
• Part 16 – Custom Dashboards (To be released)
• Part 17 – Digital Threads for Agentic AI (To be released)

Missed the earlier parts? Check them out here.

To evaluate Syndeia with your own toolset, or just to discuss your requirements and use cases, send your questions and requests to www.intercax.com/help and let us help you adopt best practices in Digital Engineering.